Skip to main content
TrustRadius
Amazon S3

Amazon S3

Overview

What is Amazon S3?

Amazon S3 is a cloud-based object storage service from Amazon Web Services. It's key features are storage management and monitoring, access management and security, data querying, and data transfer.

Read more
Recent Reviews
Read all reviews

Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Reviewer Pros & Cons

View all pros & cons
Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing
N/A
Unavailable

What is Amazon S3?

Amazon S3 is a cloud-based object storage service from Amazon Web Services. It's key features are storage management and monitoring, access management and security, data querying, and data transfer.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?

28 people also want pricing

Alternatives Pricing

What is Microsoft Azure?

Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters.

What is Microsoft System Center?

Microsoft System Center Suite is a family of IT management software for network monitoring, updating and patching, endpoint protection with anti-malware, data protection and backup, ITIL- structured IT service management, remote administration and more. It is available in two editions: standard…

Return to navigation

Product Details

What is Amazon S3?

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) is a cloud-based object storage service from Amazon Web Services. It offers scalability, data availability, security, and performance. It provides great utility for storage management and monitoring, access management and security, data querying, and data transfer.

It is suitable for businesses or organizations of any size to store and protect any amount of data for a range of use cases, such as websites, mobile applications, backup and restore, archive, enterprise applications, IoT devices, and big data analytics. Amazon S3 provides management features for organizing data and configuring access controls to meet business, organizational, and compliance requirements.


Amazon S3 Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Amazon S3 is a cloud-based object storage service from Amazon Web Services. It's key features are storage management and monitoring, access management and security, data querying, and data transfer.

Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 9.8.

The most common users of Amazon S3 are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

Reviews and Ratings

(331)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-21 of 21)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
January 18, 2024

A true view on S3

Pankaj Choudhary | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using S3 as a images and files storage, Earlier we were using our own static ip based server but we faced to many server downs and request failed. So we moved to S3 and now we are very happy with the S3 because request failure rate has gone down. Response time is very low and returning responses very quickly.
  • Image and files uploading is very quick.
  • Image loading is very fast no lack of images.
  • Provides in cache memory for the quick responses
  • Costing is too much, They can reduce the cost
  • Configuration at the AWS portal is little bit difficult for beginners they can improve.
  • Library to use the S3 can be lighter
Where we want the quick responses and we have to manage too many files then we can use the S3, But if we are not processing the files to many times its not required to use the S3. If we want to use a file from different servers then its a very good option to store the file at a central point like S3 and use it from the different servers.
Matthew Gardner | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Amazon's Simple Storage Service to store both static and somewhat dynamic assets. It is used in conjunction with Amazon's CloudFront service. It is a simple, cost-effective way to serve assets across our web apps, mobile apps, and websites. It solves the problem of reliable distribution at an affordable price, all wrapped up in a scalable solution. Between our various properties, we distribute over 1TB of data per month across millions of instances.
  • Scalable
  • Reliable
  • Well documented
  • Hard to use
  • Not for non-developers
  • Bad online UI
S3 is a VERY quick way to get up and running. Very simple for developers to use and have work. With the rest of Amazon's offerings, it can scale to be distributed via CDN, replicated, etc. If you need non-developers to store/update, though, this may not be the solution for you. The UI is far too confusing and easy to make a mistake on, and if you use CloudFront you need to invalidate, etc. with new uploads which is hard to grasp as a non-developer. As well, other companies have far less expensive solutions which scale just as well.
Sam Othman | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We mostly use this for archiving old data that is infrequently accessed. It has been a good low-cost solution to get away from using on-prem NAS or even further back external hard disks and even CDs. It has ticked a lot of boxes for us in the sense of keeping this data safe and secure without the potential of data loss through external methods.
  • Low cost
  • Multiple tiers of storage
  • Great API
  • Not a lot of features.
  • Can be complex to set up properly.
For archiving old data that is infrequently accessed it is perfect. You can choose to let it go into cold/glacier storage which saves even further costs but at the expense of accessibility. I like that you can set access rules to automatically move it to the next storage tier after a certain amount of time that it has not been accessed.

I also use it a lot with PHP via the API. We have some custom in-house applications that have a fair amount of data uploaded into them. S3 has been a perfect solution to store these files, taking the load off web servers and never having issues with running out of storage.
Adam Lauer | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Amazon S3 is the backbone of our data storage. We store 90% plus of all data in S3. It also serves as a backup and disaster recovery plan as we take other storage solutions and back them up to S3. It is also used for data flow and transfer from/to internal/external vendors.
  • Storing mass amount of data.
  • Cheap storage options.
  • Versioning of objects.
  • Different cost tiers for what you need.
  • Notifications on Object changes.
  • The UI is clunky and not great.
  • It can get costly fast depending on how you use it.
  • There are underlying/unknown issues that make you have to consider how to store you data to achieve maximum rewards.
  • We use S3 as an entry point (landing zone for data). We can then transform (normalize) the data and store it again.
  • S3 has great services built around automating tasks to be done when an object is updated/created/deleted.
  • S3 has built-in replication for back up and disaster recovery.
It is not great that some of it features require you to think about how you want to store your data. For example to get the cheapest usage it is recommended to use less objects with greater size instead of many objects of tiny size.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use S3 to store files that we offer to subscriber customers.
  • Scales automatically.
  • Is always available.
  • Is cost effective with different storage tiers.
  • Slow access.
  • Difficult to manage files on large repositories.
  • Users are locked on it as migration to other services isn't easy or cheap.
Very well suited to storing files that have a long "shelf life." Less suited if you need to move then (download or upload) multiple times because you pay for bandwidth.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
In my organization, we use S3 for nearly every aspect of asset storage -- user files, user profiles, saved application states -- as well as for hosting our primary web frontends (static React.js applications). It's used by the whole organization, both extensively throughout engineering to host our software and assets, and additionally by our operations and other teams as a general purpose host for special content.

It solves the business problem of exposing any sort of asset to external users, as well as serves as a complete website hosting and deployment service stack for static websites.
  • Fantastic developer API, including AWS command line and library utilities.
  • Strong integration with the AWS ecosystem, especially with regards to access permissions.
  • It's astoundingly stable- you can trust it'll stay online and available for anywhere in the world.
  • Its static website hosting feature is a hidden gem-- it provides perhaps the cheapest, most stable, most high-performing static web hosting available in PaaS.
  • The whole AWS ecosystem has a lot of confusing and unintuitive configuration options, and S3 is no exception. Thankfully it's so broadly used that you can reliably find solutions on external sites like StackOverflow.
  • Getting IAM permissions just right for Static Website hosting require a little trial and error since S3 defaults to security instead of open access.
  • While S3's file type inference is decent, some new file types (such as .wasm) aren't inferred correctly, so you have to configure their MIME types after uploading them in order for them to serve correctly.
I've used S3 continuously for projects large and small for over 10 years. It's just such a common and essential tool in software development. Hosting assets/images, or providing file upload abilities to users, come up very often throughout software, and S3 is hands-down the best place to serve and store files. It's flexible enough that you can use client libraries to perform direct uploads rather than writing your own handlers, etc. S3 is a tool that immediately has value for file hosting and storage, and then extends as far as you need it to for all manner of asset management.
Joshua Dickson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) to persist large blobs of data that would be otherwise expensive or otherwise challening to store in one of our database systems. We use S3 primarily for areas of the business where it's important to easily store large pieces of data, such as images and large JSON data sets, or where it is important to share that data between multiple types of services.
  • Highly available and redundant; we do not worry about the service having downtime
  • Simple usage from multiple different frameworks using Amazon's SDKs, or roll your own
  • A large number of bucket policies and security adjustments to tailor usage to customer needs
  • Regional support for storing assets in particular locations around the world
  • Web console can be very confusing and challenging to use, especially for new users
  • Bucket policies are very flexible, but the composability of the security rules can be very confusing to get right, often leading to security rules in use on buckets other than what you believe they are
Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is particularly well-suited for cases where you have already made the decision to use Amazon's cloud software resources and need to add the option of storing files for use from one or more services. Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is also a good choice for its native integration with Amazon's CDN, Cloudfront. In general, using Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) will make less sense if you are already using other services from another vendor, such as Azure.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Amazon S3 as our off-site remote backup storage solutions for our entire storage IT infrastructure. We have our on-prem storage infrastructure being backed up hourly, weekly and monthly to S3. Amazon S3 has enabled our organization to have a disaster recovery plan at a cost-effective price without the need of maintaining an offsite storage infrastructure.
  • Very simple to setup and administer.
  • Can grow with your storage needs.
  • Cost effective.
  • Geo redundant.
  • Fault tolerant and reliable.
  • If not managed correct it could get expensive.
  • Searching needs to be improved and is not effective.
  • Better reporting would be great.
Amazon S3 is great for any organization that has a dedicated IT or IT Department. You can build out a fully redundant and can scale as your remote backup needs grow. But if not correctly monitored, the storage usage of S3 could become extremely expensive.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use S3 for reliably and securely storing audios, medical transcriptions, application logs and pretty much everything else. S3 is our go-to cloud storage service as we are already invested in many other core AWS services like EC2, RDS and CloudWatch. We have been using S3 for around 10 years now, and so far, we have never had an issue with it.
  • Reliable and secure way to store objects in cloud: Storing any type of file(text, pdf, doc, csv, etc) is very easy with S3. Fetching this stored content as and when you require is also pretty easy and can be done using both the console and AWS CLI. Appropriate permissions can be set up for buckets using IAM roles/policies.
  • Versioning in buckets: S3 gives you a very handy feature to store multiple versions of objects stored in a bucket.
  • Lifecycle policies: You can set up lifecycle policies in S3 that can move your older objects to IA or Glacier. This setup is very easy and can be done within minutes for a bucket.
  • Replication: The cross-region replication that S3 provides is wonderful. Beware of the inter-regional data transfer costs though.
  • No support for object versions retention: There can be a retention policy(days or number) for object versions that are stored in S3 so that we don't have to worry about paying extra for all the old versions of an object in the bucket.
  • No feature for replication within a region: Currently AWS does not support replication within a region. Also, having to enable versioning for buckets in which you need replication makes it even more costly.
  • Confusing pricing: The pricing model of S3 can be a little confusing for a new customer with questions regarding data transfer from other AWS services, between buckets or data transfer to the outside world.
S3 can be used to store your application logs or objects that need to be frequently accessed. It can also be used in conjunction with AWS Glue for data transformation tasks or to host a static website. The entire Simple Monthly Calculator service of AWS is hosted on S3. S3 would not be recommended for use as a database service or where the change needs to be reflected instantly. Since S3 provides eventual consistency, there is no guarantee that an update made by someone will actually be seen by someone accessing the same object just after. This is in contrast to a database wherein if a change is committed, it will start showing instantly to everyone else.
Bryan McAnulty | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are a digital product design and development company. When we build a new web or mobile app, the service we choose to use for application and database hosting may vary, but for serving static assets like images and other file downloads, we are always using Amazon S3. S3 combined with Amazon Cloudfront lets us serve static assets to our users and customers without having to worry about performance.
  • Ensures web and application servers don't get bogged down from serving static assets.
  • Works with popular frameworks for easy integration in applications to allow user uploading of additional assets.
  • Integrates easily with Amazon Cloudfront as a CDN.
  • Very little configuration needed to get started.
  • The website UI, while easy to use by even less technical staff, but certain options such as allowing public read for new uploads by default instead of manual selection, requires a bit more technical knowledge. (That said there is generally a custom UI built for users to upload files anyway so in our situation this isn't important).
Amazon S3 is a great choice to store frequently accessed image and media assets that might be needed as part of your website, web app or mobile application. There is also Amazon's "Glacier" storage option which is a storage class that is meant for data that isn't frequently accessed, and which can be stored at a significantly lower cost.

At the moment there is really no reason for us to choose a different service for this use case. The popularity of S3 means that any new developers working with us are already familiar with how to work with it.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
S3 is a great cost effective static file storage tool that can be accessed from anywhere. We store all kinds of static files in S3 ranging from application data to configuration files to code and automation scripts. S3's access is controlled by IAM roles which allow for strict and tight control over which users are allowed to access which files.
  • Price - S3 is very cheap
  • Ease of use - It is an extremely simple service with basic upload, download, and list commands accessible via the web, APIs, and CLIs.
  • Security - S3's integration with IAM makes security easy and powerful.
  • Advanced searches - Searching within S3 for files can be a very painful process and very slow.
  • Dangerous - rogue users can do a lot of damage if you have important data stored in S3
  • The web interface can be difficult to use for inexperienced users.
If you have static files that are not frequently updated, then S3 is an extremely efficient and cheap place to store those files. Even if you aren't doing anything else in AWS, using S3 from outside of AWS is just as easy as using it from within AWS on an EC2 instance. Just upload your static files and access them whenever you need them.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Amazon S3 for hosting all of our backups, our Apache Spark output files (in lieu of HDFS), our Snowflake external stages, our static website, etc. Additionally, we migrate our logs there for historical purposes. As far as file storage goes, it is able to meet all of our needs with little-to-no downtime.
  • S3 is very good with uptime
  • S3 is elastic and infinitely scalable
  • S3 is user-friendly
  • S3 is not good if you need to copy files a lot; it can be slow
  • S3 is not a replacement for a file system. It is blob storage, so things like updates and renames are impossible
  • S3 requires globally unique bucket names, which can be a challenge
S3 is suitable for static websites, Big Data (Spark or Hadoop) file system, in lieu of HDFS, and backups. S3 is not suitable for a file system replacement, frequent updates, or storing files that require renames.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The most popular IaaS service out there, Amazon S3 offers good infrastructure, speeds, API support, command line interface and also a great user interface for web access. We are using AWS services to support our business and hosting all the datasets on S3. S3 is typically used to upload and download content, and storing application-specific data. Also, this cloud-based service is HIPAA compliance, so we can store sensitive dataset without any compliance issues and security concerns. Enterprises can keep data secure, processes compliant and teams on the same page.
  • Data management and storage
  • Quick upload, download and move on EC2 instance
  • Security and HIPAA compliance
  • Folder sharing with multi level permission
  • APIs and libraries to access data through any programming language
  • Searching for the document is very hard, it allows only prefix to search the files.
  • Also, downloads require more than one click which irritates frequent users.
  • Price compared to service is a little bit high, still not a major concern.
Amazon S3 is a storage infrastructure under the umbrella of AWS. If you host any service that requires a quick and secure data transfer then S3 is the best solution. Also, in the case of multiprogramming language applications, S3 is the best option regarding compatibility with multiple programming languages. But if your requirement is just to store the dataset by manual effort and you want to share with others without the frequent requirement of data uploads and downloads, then Google Drive is better solution compare to S3.
Andrew Raines | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use S3 for the storage of all our of static web assets (images, videos, audio, etc), user-uploaded data, internal log files, and backups. In addition to the storage uses, we also use the static website hosting feature for some of our web-based services. This is a particularly cost-effective way of getting a website online - either a small and simple HTML-based site or a complex single-page web application.
  • Storage! You can store as much as you like in whatever format and structure you like.
  • Pay as you go - you only pay for what you use, so your storage costs scale up and down with your storage and access patterns. No more having to provision space ahead of time or having wasted space floating around. It's also fairly inexpensive.
  • Static website hosting - really simple and easy to get going with, but surprisingly powerful. You can do everything from simple static websites to full Single Page Applications (assuming its all Javascript).
  • It isn't the cheapest out there for storage, but I think still represents good value for money. You do also have a large array of storage options which can lower the cost if you are willing to reduce reliability/robustness.
  • You can't use HTTPS off the bat with S3, so you almost always need to put CloudFront (or similar CDN) in front of it. Whilst this isn't a problem, it means it isn't quite as quick and straightforward to get going with as perhaps some other services.
  • Whilst generally very low latency, we have observed occasional latency spikes whilst retrieving objects. Assuming you are running a CDN in front of S3 (which you should) then this becomes less problematic, but it probably isn't the best choice if you absolutely must guarantee low latency.
Wherever you need to store things, S3 is pretty much the answer. Also, if you want to host simple websites without the cost or headache of scaling your own services, the static web hosting may be the answer you're looking for.
Justin Schroeder | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use S3 for everything imaginable, but particularly for storing larger assets like images, video, isos or data files. This allows us to purchase much smaller nodes in terms of attached SSDs. The cost of S3 for storage is almost a non-issue for anything in the sub-terabyte range, especially when compared to the price of larger EC2, Rackspace, or digital ocean instances.
  • Nearly every web framework now has integrations with the service as an easy plug-and-play storage solution.
  • General integration is so good there are tons of third-party tools like Transmit (for mac) you can mount S3 as a remote disk for easy access, and even Amazon's own web portal for using S3 has gotten quite good.
  • It's incredibly easy to offload all the expensive bandwidth operations for your typical website or app to S3, and, assuming your services are not yet HTTP2, you even get the benefits of sharding.
  • There is no true hierarchical filesystem in S3. So for example, if you have a file like /images/pizza/1.png, and you delete 1.png it deletes the entire directory structure. Now many tools will place an empty dummy file at /images/pizza to make it appear as if the structure is there – but if you do these operations via api it can be a bit of a gotchya.
  • The bucket namespace is global, so it can be really hard to get a sensible bucket name. Honestly no idea why they made that global.
  • While you can serve S3 content at your own subdomain, you have to have the proper bucket name to do so and this can get pretty cumbersome. Ideally, there would be a better way to mask S3 buckets at a DNS level.
Anytime – and I do mean anytime – you have files of any size over, say, 50kb and they are static you should reach for S3 first. In 7 years of using the service, I have never once lost a file. There have been a total of maybe 30 minutes of downtime in 7 years, which was a DNS level issue. The speed is excellent, the availability is incredible, and there simply is no good competitor for the price.
January 16, 2018

S3 for Cloud Backup

Bill Greganti | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are currently using S3 for off-site storage of backup data using a variety of backup client software. We utilize multiple Amazon sites for redundancy when needed. Some data is stored in our account using our software for our clients, and some data is stored in the client's account which we manage.
  • Multiple security access levels ensure that one client cannot access another clients data.
  • Multiple geographic locations allows us to meet certain audit requirements.
  • Simple setup from within many cloud backup clients.
  • Security configuration can be a little confusing and sometimes requires making completely new accounts.
Amazon S3 meets many of the demands for cloud based backup including some audit requirements for various DoD, HIPAA, and PCI restricted businesses. We store data with various levels of encryption and redundancy for our clients as required by their industry. There are also less expensive options, such as Glacier, in cases where audit compliance is not an issue.
Robb Glietz | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are currently using S3 in two different areas of the company, the first is to store backups for our WordPress websites, we have 10 different sites so each site has an automated process where every day they upload critical framework data to the different files I set up on S3. The second area where we use it is for archiving of BLOB's from our escrow software. The software saves documents which are used in the escrow in BLOB format. Using the automated process in the escrow software every sixty days the BLOB's are uploaded into the S3 folder setup for it.
  • Once set up it is as simple as pointing to it and it works.
  • It is fast for putting data on it and taking it off.
  • It allows a mixture of data types which makes it ideal for how we use it; we don't have to worry that it would store a data type.
  • If you're not a network type and don't understand terms like DNS or routing then it's going to be hard to get it setup correctly. They need to make this process a little more user-friendly for people that are not IT types.
  • They should make security more friendly currently you have to have a very good understanding of what your setting so that the outside world does not see all of your data, a security preview would be great also to make sure the security setting is performing correctly.
  • Billing is another area which could use some help in making it friendlier, you have to spend a lot of time doing deep dives on your bill to understand why cost just seems to have gone up.
Amazon S3 is well suited for any applications which need to store documents, pictures, video either pre/post-processing or BLOB's/CLOB's. The reason for that is once you set everything up it is easy to point to and it is fast to get and store items on it with no worries. Plus with the redundant backup's it is secure. The other great feature is if you're using other AWS it is extremely easy to connect to S3 and the speed is even better since it is on their own network.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using Amazon S3 as an online repository for online backups. This addresses the needs of having data stored offsite with multiple layers of redundancy.
  • Security - S3 is great at encrypting traffic at rest and in transit.
  • Integration - S3 works great with multiple applications which is great for us since we don't have to be married to a partciluar software solution for online backups.
  • Billing - Easy to read and straight forward for clients.
  • Ease of use - Pretty difficult to setup if you aren't in the industry. Not something a notice user can setup without spending some time with it.
S3 is well suited for anyone that wants to store data in the "cloud" and not be so expensive. This is beneficial for individuals that have a lot of data to store.
Corwin Cole | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Amazon S3 is one of the primary Amazon Web Services that we use to power our website, including the web application that employees use for our core business functions. We utilize S3 to automatically store all claim documentation and legal agreements uploaded or generated through our web app. S3 is also automatically used by Amazon's Elastic Beanstalk to store zipped packages of previous versions of our application, in case we require a rollback. Finally, S3 is where we store all of our static and media files, e.g. JavaScript, CSS, and images. Our EB application serves these files from S3 rather than from its local machine.
  • Automatically stores previous versions of applications deployed to Elastic Beanstalk, to preserve rollbacks.
  • Integrates with Python applications using the boto library.
  • Serves static and media files quickly and reliably.
  • The documentation about caching, CORS protection, and permissions in general could be easier to comprehend. For experts on cloud architecture, I'm sure it's fine, but as a novice, it was very difficult to wrap my head around.
  • Could come with some Amazon-vetted JavaScript, especially a framework like jQuery, Angular, etc. Having to upload my own copies of frameworks like jQuery into S3 so that I'm not dependent on an external CDN is a little redundant.
  • I'm not sure if it already comes with virus protection or if that would even make sense, but if not, that could be a feature. Really I have almost no complaints.
S3 is excellent for storing and serving static, media, and uploaded files. Keep your JS, CSS, and images there, as well as user-uploaded images and documents and app-generated documents, and then serve them through configuration in your scalable applications. Elastic Beanstalk and Lambda play very well with S3. If you grow to especially large scale, start managing the regions of your S3 buckets for optimal cloud service.
Craig Nash | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We utilize Amazon web services as one of several preferred cloud providers, which we use to host WordPress sites after we have completed the design, giving the client a private, managed server cluster within the same price range of a basic WordPress host. We specifically use S3 as the primary storage location of all site content, and as a cache/cdn service. This lets us use the EC2 storage for storing only server related files, which reduces storage costs and potential data loss, as we can quickly rebuild our servers, while not having to worry about the safety and integrity of the sites content. We essentially use S3 in the same way one would use a NAS or SAN on a web hosting network, which is a fairly accurate comparison due to the integration and partnership that Amazon has with EMC, giving S3 similar functionality as a physical EMC SAN.
  • One of the main attractions of S3 is the quality of it's basic services, including security, stored data integrity, and data availability from almost anywhere via almost any system. The snapshot service is one of the best services offered through a cloud, and has always been a required feature for any SAN device I potentially purchase.
  • S3 has a strong partnership with EMC, which has allowed S3 to offer a wide variety of services and features that would normally require the customer to purchase an EC device, which opens up high-level storage to smaller companies at an affordable rate.
  • S3 has a major lead over other cloud providers due to the S3 service, and the wide range of capabilities. Instead of being a simple "drive" it can natively operate as a web server, hosting a wide array of static content, which reduces server load and costs. This is a major advantage, especially for someone operating within the free tier, where every little bit of processing power is an important resource.
  • The final selling point of S3 for myself, was the ability to connect into a wide variety of services, both local Amazon services, such as CloudFront CDN, and remote non-Amazon services such as WordPress backup solutions, which ends up keeping all of my data across the organization at one easy to access, and secure location.
  • While S3 has a huge list of available services, the services themselves tend to be lacking, such as the web server capability being able to only host static HTML content.
  • The additional capabilities have gotten a bit "out of hand" in terms of the amount of services available, which seemingly follow no particular grouping, which can make venturing beyond basic S3 storage services a daunting, and confusing endeavor.
  • Not having any storage "packages" for serving data is a big negative, as we would feel more comfortable with a set package, and a known monthly cost, rather than a fluctuating service billed by time x data.
I feel S3 is best used by a company looking to primarily use it as a safe and secure location to store high-availability data, leaving the additional services as an option for future expansions. Myself, and several other cloud architects I have spoken with have shared another scenario that fits S3, and other AWS services quite well, which is a startup using the free-tier with the Activate program. If done correctly, several S3 capabilities can be employed to offload tasks from underpowered virtual servers, letting the entire system become faster and more reliable.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
it is used for backups of all our files. We use S3 and glacier and encryption.
  • high availability
  • cheap
  • encryption at rest
  • s3cmd makes it easy to sync
  • I would love to be able to use s3 easily for ftp type work
  • I would like to see s3 console searchable
  • I would like to see a better way to manage access. The IAM/bucket policy process is confusing
it is great for backup. I would like to have an easy way to move from s3 to cloudwatch logs without having to write lambda code
Return to navigation